|
Sudanese climate diplomacy researcher Lina Yassin is supporting the Least Developed Countries Group at the U.N. climate summit in Belém, Brazil. The group is composed of 44 countries, including Sudan, whose cumulative emissions amount to less than 1% of total global emissions. "They are the countries that have the least amount of resources to respond to the climate crisis," explains Yassin.
Yassin also discusses the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, where the estimated death toll is now at 150,000. "This is a proxy war funded by foreign nationals who have vested interests in Sudan's resources. … The UAE has been using the RSF militia to illegally smuggle gold out to finance the war and finance their own gold reserves. The UAE is also really interested in Sudan's agricultural lands."
|
|
At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, we sit down with Colombian environmentalist Susana Muhamad, who served as Colombia's minister of environment and sustainable development from 2022 to 2025. Muhamad discusses the U.N.'s mandate to mitigate the acceleration of human-caused climate change and condemns the powerful, diverting influence of the fossil fuel lobby. Muhamad, who is of Palestinian descent, also responds to the United States' attacks on boats in the Caribbean and to the ongoing Israeli genocide of Gaza. "These are not issues that are not correlated," she says. "Humanity can do better. [We] can be very proactive and productive in shifting this situation of climate crisis, rather than continue investing in arms, in armies and in defense."
|
|
As Democracy Now! broadcasts from the COP30 U.N. climate summit, we speak with Kumi Naidoo, the longtime South African human rights and environmental justice activist who is president of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. He discusses U.S. absence from climate talks, Gaza, and wealthy countries refusing to take accountability for the climate crisis. "We're not asking the rich nations for a charity here. We are asking them to pay their climate debt."
|
RELATED ARTICLES | | |
|
As we broadcast from the United Nations climate summit in Belém, we look at Brazil's contradictory climate policies. The Lula government has reduced deforestation in the Amazon while also approving oil drilling near the Amazon. "Many parts of the Amazon are now reaching a tipping point, so a point of no return," says Ilan Zugman, Brazilian climate activist and 350.org's regional head for Latin America and the Caribbean. "Lula is still pushing for new oil and gas areas in the country, including in the Amazon."
|
RELATED ARTICLES | | |
|
